Despite the chicken’s close relationship with the red jungle fowl, there is evidence that the gray jungle fowl (G. sonneratii) of southern India and other jungle fowl species, also members of Gallus, may have contributed to the bird’s ancestry. The chicken is a sacred animal in many cultures and deeply embedded in belief systems and religious practices.Roosters are sometimes used for divination, a practice called alectryomancy. This stimulates the hen to lose her feathers but also re-invigorates egg-production. In some other countries, flocks are sometimes force-moulted rather than being slaughtered to re-invigorate egg-laying. After 12 months of laying, the commercial hen’s egg-laying ability declines to the point where the flock is commercially unviable.

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• Chicken can mean a chick, and this was historically the meaning of the word chicken, as in William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, where Macduff laments the death of “all my pretty chickens and their dam”.
• Genomic studies estimated that the chicken was domesticated 8,000 years ago in Southeast Asia and spread to China and India 2,000 to 3,000 years later.
• After 12 months of laying, the commercial hen’s egg-laying ability declines to the point where the flock is commercially unviable.
• Leftover chicken broth with grains

Chickens give different warning calls to indicate that a predator is approaching from the air or on the ground. A male’s crowing is a loud and sometimes shrill call, serving as a territorial signal to other males, and in response to sudden disturbances within their surroundings. Chickens are capable of mobbing and killing a weak or inexperienced predator, such as a young fox. Some breeds have a mutation that causes extra feathering under the face, giving the appearance of a beard.

Chicken recipes

Under natural conditions, most birds lay only until a clutch is complete; they then incubate all the eggs. Adult chickens of both sexes have a fleshy crest on their heads called a comb or cockscomb, and hanging flaps of skin on either side under their beaks called wattles; combs and wattles are more prominent in males. In older sources, and still often in trade and scientific contexts, chickens as a species are described as common fowl or domestic fowl.

Coconut Chicken Curry – quick and easy

Add chicken to one of your lists below, or create a new one. To add chicken to a word list please sign up or log in. Mature males have long been used for sport (i.e., cockfighting, now outlawed in many jurisdictions) as well as khelaghor game for breeding.

Domestication and economic production

Breeding increased under the Roman Empire and reduced in the Middle Ages. Middle Eastern chicken remains go back to a little earlier than 2000 BC in Syria. Chickens reached Egypt via the Middle East for purposes of cockfighting about 1400 BC and became widely bred in Egypt around 300 BC. Re-examination of bones from over 600 sites, and dating of those from 23 sites, identified the earliest probable chicken bones as from central Thailand, at Ban Non Wat, some 3,250 years ago.

Eggs of chickens from the high-altitude region of Tibet have special physiological adaptations that result in a higher hatching rate in low oxygen environments. Hens often try to lay in nests that already contain eggs and sometimes move eggs from neighbouring nests into their own. As with all birds, reproduction is controlled by a neuroendocrine system, the Gonadotropin-Releasing Hormone-I neurons in the hypothalamus. Sperm transfer occurs by cloacal contact between the male and female, in an action called the ‘cloacal kiss’.